


Tainted

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [5]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Act 1, Dragon Age Quest: Terror on the Coast, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 07:25:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5618611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation after the Terror on the Coast mission, in which Sophia Dryden comes to Kirkwall. </p><p>Even after they've separated, Merrill is still tying up Mahariel's loose ends, and the eluvian still has a hold on both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tainted

Merrill stood on the Wounded Coast, looking down at what remained of Sophia Dryden’s body now that the demon possessing her had been sent back to the Fade, and asked Anders for the story of the abomination that Mahariel had set free.

She couldn’t picture it, no matter how she turned it around in her head. There had to be something missing from Anders’ story. He hadn’t actually seen what happened, he’d only heard about it secondhand; maybe he'd forgotten some important details. Or maybe Mahariel had deliberately left something out, something unflattering. Some plan of his that had gone wrong, probably. Mahariel had tried to get away with something he shouldn’t have, and once again proved that he wasn't nearly as clever as he thought he was. Some part of her half expected the Keeper to turn up, shake her head and sigh, _da'len,_ like she’d caught Merrill trying to cover up one of Mahariel and Tamlen’s terrible ideas.

Still stirring up trouble, even with a whole sea between them.

“Oghren didn’t mention that she was a ghoul,” Anders was saying, standing over the body. “I’d thought maybe...” His lip twisted. “I guess even spirits can’t stop the Blight, once it’s got a hold of you.”

He looked a bit dazed, to the point that Merrill wondered if one of those giant spiders had been venomous after all.

They burned all the bodies, just to be safe. Even the spiders. She’d never seen a spider cremated before. Anders had pronounced the corpses of Sophia’s followers clean of the taint, but the memory of the Fifth Blight was still too fresh for any them to be willing to take chances. The three mages kept the fire roaring, and Carver went down to the water and scrubbed at where the blood had spattered his skin.

Merrill watched Sophia Dryden’s body burn. She’d never had a chance to study a ghoul before, the dark discoloration that spotted the face, blind grey eyes that could easily have been looking at Merrill from beneath vallaslin, if things had gone a little differently. And she didn’t understand how Sophia could have been a Warden _and_ a ghoul. Wardens were supposed to fix the Blight disease. That was why the Keeper let them take Mahariel. That was the whole point of them. 

“That’s what they say,” Anders agreed, his tone light. Which was no kind of answer at all.

But Mahariel had survived the disease. And not as a ghoul—at least, if the Hero of Ferelden was a ghoul, she was fairly certain someone would have mentioned it. But then again, no one had mentioned anything about the Hero of Ferelden striking deals with demons until now, either, so maybe it was just something the Wardens didn’t want known.

She asked Anders. No, the Hero of Ferelden wasn’t a ghoul. And really, there was no call for Anders to snap at her for asking. His whole story was strange. It didn’t sound like the Mahariel she knew at all, and she said as much.

“What, seriously?” Anders said. That startled him enough to lose the distracted look he’d worn since they found Sophia Dryden. “Setting demons free sounds _exactly_ like him. I thought it was a Dalish thing.”

“No. No, it really isn’t,” she said shortly.

Her life would have been a lot simpler in some ways if it _was_ a Dalish thing, actually. But really, if she had to listen to one more nonsensical tale about the Dalish—although Varric’s stories were all right. They weren’t any more accurate than Anders’, but at least Varric's didn’t make her people sound like something meant to frighten shemlen children into behaving.

But Anders was oblivious to her tone, and seemed to warm to the subject. “I once saw him try to convince a demon to teach him blood magic. He’s not even a mage!” For all his exasperation, he sounded almost fond. Which was a bit unfair, when most of their post-battle healing sessions still turned into an unasked-for lecture. He was awfully fussy about how she chose to guard his back. "Picked the worst possible things in the world to be curious about, and dragged me along with him." He tilted his head toward Sophia Dryden’s makeshift pyre. “He’s still dragging me along, apparently.”

That did sound more like Mahariel, a little. Not the demon and the blood magic specifically, but Mahariel had always been curious about her lessons with the Keeper, always asking her questions about it, even the parts he could never use himself. He just liked stories, she’d thought.

Mahariel probably could have talked the Keeper into keeping the mirror. He would have tried, anyway, and that would have counted for something. Or maybe he would have tried to talk Merrill into getting rid of it too—but she liked to think he would have understood that hiding in ignorance and fear couldn’t save anybody. Not him, not Tamlen, not any of them.

“That’s how we met—how Justice met him,” Anders said distantly. “Demons and blood magic. Not the best first impression for any of us.” His tone soured. “Sometimes I think the Commander just wanted to see if Justice would become a demon, trying to see where that line is. Trying to see what this world would do to him.”

Merrill bristled. Even ignoring the idea that some spirits were good and safe and that there was a line to be found—the Mahariel she knew could be thoughtless, but he’d never been cruel.

“Did he?” she asked. “Become a demon, I mean.”

She got Anders’ full attention that time. “No,” he snapped.

Hawke cleared his throat from across the pyre. “That’s enough talk of demons around the corpses, thank you. Don’t want anything getting any ideas.”

Anders had his mouth half open to say something else. But he subsided, limiting himself to a muttered, “Bloody hypocrite.”

She had no idea what he meant by that. She certainly didn’t think it was at all hypocritical of her to be bothered by all this, these stories of her lethallin. Mahariel might be too curious for his own good, but it wasn’t a set-abominations-free-to-wander-the-earth kind of curious. Or at least, it never used to be.

She returned to the Alienage late that night. Even with the combined magical fire from all three of them, the bodies had taken a while to burn down to ash, long enough for each of the Fereldans to feel certain there was no trace of the Blight left.

She ran her fingers over the glass of her mirror. There was no trace of Blight left there either, and no way for it to continue to poison any of her people. Not Mahariel, not anybody.

Anders didn’t understand anything about her, so why should he understand Mahariel any better? There was no reason she should believe any of his stories. The Mahariel he described was completely unrecognizable.

But sitting in the alienage in the center of the city, looking into that mirror that didn’t reflect anything, she wondered if Mahariel would recognize her now, either.


End file.
